Reading Questions
Ewen, PR

1. What was "Light's Golden Jubilee" (p. 216)? Who was involved in it?
2. How and why had attitudes toward big business changed in the post WWI years, according to Ewen? How was corporate PR involved? What other factors were involved?
3. What was the relationship between movies and consumerism in the '20s according to Ewen?
4. What was the nature of the shifts in income, credit and capitalization in the post WWI US that Ewen notes, and why were they significant?
5. What was The Man Nobody Knows, and what was it representative of, according to Ewen?
6. What indicators of "a darker side of the 'money culture'" (p. 226) does Ewen discuss?
7. What happened in October 1929?

1. What happened in 1931?

2. How did public attitudes toward big business shift in the '30s?

3. What was the attitude of the head of AT&T and other business people toward social welfare programs, the unemployed, the homeless, etc. at the start of the depression?

4. Who was John Maynard Keyes and what were his beliefs on economics and on publicity?

5. What does Ewen mean by the statement that "FDR challenged the intrinsic dualism that had guided public relations since the turn of the century" (p. 240)?

6. Give some examples of Roosevelt's skill "as a publicist of the word" and "as an image maker" (p. 243).

7. Ewen notes a "voluntary censorship" by the press in regard to F. D. Roosevelt. What does he mean?

8.What kinds of values and practices infused new deal programs according to Ewen?

1. What was "Howe's Daily Bugle" (p. 247)?

2. How did FDR's practices with the press differ from that of previous presidents? What effect did it have according to Ewen?

3. Why might the radio industry have had different attitudes toward cooperation with Roosevelt than the print media?

4. What were FDR's fireside chats like? How were they prepared?

5. How did FDR's administration link the concepts of political & economic rights?

6. What kinds of Media did FDR's administration use in its publicity efforts?

7.Who were Tugwell & Stryker? What did they do? What was Stryker's relationship to progressive photo-journalist Hine?

8.What was the Resettlement Administration's information Division?

9.What was the FSA? How were its techniques similar to and different from early progressive's uses of photography?